Michelle Phinx, Byron Mobley, Fred Paige, Rogers Glover PSY/428 Annie Fongheiser University of Phoenix February 9, 2013
2 Job Satisfaction Employee job satisfaction continues to drop yearly with the ever-changing state of the economy. An employee continues to pursue careers or jobs that will provide opportunities, monetary compensation, and job security. Best performing organizations understands that employee job satisfaction is important and is linking its business goals to employees job satisfaction goals. This paper will discuss job satisfaction, and how organizational socialization has influenced the workplace and will provide examples of its positive influence on job satisfaction. Our nations unemployment situation has created an environment that employees are staying on their jobs despite whether they have job satisfaction or not. Industrial/organizational psychology has studied employee job satisfaction for years and has applied all types of scientific measurements to the subject. According to Eagly and Chaiken, (1993) job satisfaction is basically an employees attitude toward his or her job. Employees who have job satisfaction, which are a minority of the workforce are expecting their job to challenge them, and allow them to advance and move up within an organization. There are several attributes that employees displays with job satisfaction, which are less absenteeism, positive attitude, teamwork, produce better quality of work and interpersonal relations are developed. The attributes described above are the results of a healthy and safe work environment, good benefits, competitive salaries, and promotional opportunities. An organization that can offer an employee these attributes will always have a loyal and dedicated employee that has job satisfaction. Organizational socialization has continued to have a direct impact on job satisfaction of employees, which contributes to increased productivity in the workplace. 3 As new employees are hire organizational socialization explains needed behaviors and social skills to successfully acclimate themselves in an organizational culture as a productive member. Generally, organizational socialization provides a framework of how mutual reliance, work ethics, and information sharing are critical elements of an organization. There are two levels that are affected directly by organizational socialization, which are the organization and individual levels. At the organization level it provides a consistent unchanging environment, and at the individual level it provides new talents, different perspectives, and new ideas to an organization. As employees come and go the socialization process is maintain which creates an environment of history, principles and values. As employees assume their organizational role within the organization they are able to contribute to the socialization of new employees.
Companies depend on their workers to get the job done and be productive therefore; having organizational commitment within the workforce is essential to owners and management. There are many ways in which a company can show interest and loyalty to an employee such as family friendly benefits, flexible spending accounts, child care, elder care referrals, part-time work options, and on-site day care facilities. Some of these benefits provide job satisfaction to employees who view their time as more valuable than money. Other benefits can include health and fitness programs, wellness programs for the employee and their family, counseling services and a variety of on-site facilities that can alleviate time stressors for the employee. Google is a prime example of how their organization provides these services to their employees to positively impact job satisfaction. They offer free massages, multi- 4 cultural cuisines, a pet park, recreation center, gym, outdoor activities, and even laundry services. Not only do these motivational benefits appeal to the workers, there are cognitive benefits that appeal to all employees as well. All employees are encouraged to find new ideas and ways that the company can run fluently. If a new employee or veteran employee has a new idea, it is voted on by their peers and if enough employees agree then that idea can be implemented by the employee who came up with the idea. (lifeatgoogle.com) This is an example of the cognitive theory which states employees make judgments about how fairly they are being treated, choose where they will direct their efforts, and are able to anticipate future rewards associated with different levels of goal accomplishment. (Jex & Britt 2008.) Organizations generally want to keep hard working employees satisfied because of the high level of employee contentedness. Employee satisfaction is essential to the success of any organization therefore; keeping employees satisfied should be a priority of the employer. High turnover ratios because of the economic downturn are an expense that can be avoided through organizational commitment. We have discussed many reasons why an employee can feel discouraged at work and resign including stress, lack of recognition, limited growth potential, and even employee perception of the company. Through proper implementation of organization commitment, companies can keep employees employed and satisfied.
5 Jex, S. M., & Britt, T.W. (2008). Organizational Psychology; A scientist- practitioner approach (2 nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Son and other credible sources.